1. Technical Field
The embodiments of the present invention generally relate to the storage and retrieval of messages destined for mobile devices. More particularly, the embodiments relate to systems and methods of managing messages that provide improved scalability and fault-tolerance.
2. Discussion
In the highly competitive wireless networking industry, there is a well-documented trend toward enhanced functionality. While the above trend is desirable to the consumer, it presents significant challenges to network designers as well as service providers. One area of particular concern is the increasing demand for messaging services.
Providing messaging services such as the short message service (SMS) described in “Technical Realization of the Short Message Service (SMS) Point-to-Point (PP),” European Telecommunications Standards Institute, ETSI TS 100.901 v7.5.0, December 2001, to mobile devices such as mobile telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and pagers enables subscribers to communicate in environments in which traditional voice and other nodes of communication are impractical, inconvenient, and often unavailable. Messaging services such as the multimedia messaging service (MMS) described in “WAP MMS Architecture Overview”, Version 25 Apr. 2001, WAP-205-MMSArchOverview-20010425-a, WAP Forum, (a copy of which can be obtained from a website maintained by the WAP Forum); “WAP MMS Client Transactions”, Version 15 Jan. 2002, WAP-206-MMSCTR-20020115-a, WAP Forum, (a copy of which can be obtained from a website maintained by the WAP Forum); and “WAP MMS Encapsulation Protocol”, WAP-209-MMSEncapsulation-20020105-a, WAP Forum, (a copy of which can be obtained from a website maintained by the WAP Forum), are presented with similar challenges in the mobile environment.
As the demand for messaging services increases, the burden on servers to require large storage capacity for messages as well as high-performance message storage and retrieval also increases. Single servers have been proposed, but are typically unable to scale to increased capacity and performance requirements. Furthermore, frequent backup operations are often required in order to maintain data in the event of a server failure. Alternative approaches involve the use of multiple, distributed servers, but they require human intervention in order to reconfigure the wireless network in the event of a server failure. Conventional distributed server techniques are therefore typically unable to handle individual server failures reliably. There is therefore a need to provide an approach that is scalable as well as fault-tolerant.